The unprecedented rise of Donald Trump to the Republican presidential nomination has fueled speculation the billionaire may have plans to launch a post-election media network.
As Bloomberg’s Gerry Smith writes, “with former Breitbart News chairman Stephen Bannon recently hired as a campaign chief and Fox News founder Roger Ailes advising, the last stretch of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is looking packed with media moguls.”
But Smith notes a Trump media network would likely look more like Glenn Beck‘s The Blaze than Fox News, in part because of advertiser resistance to the Trump brand:
Several brands have balked at supporting Trump, declining to sponsor the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. They likely wouldn’t buy commercials on Trump’s TV network either.
That’s why an online video channel makes more sense. It’s been tried before, with mixed results. In 2014, Sarah Palin introduced a $10-a-month online TV channel, but shut it down a year later. On the other hand, Beck started TheBlaze online two years ago and got as many as 400,000 subscribers to pay $99.95 a year or $9.95 a month, according to (BTIG Research analyst) Rich Greenfield.